Kate: The Journal Of A Confederate Nurse

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Text originally published in 1959 under the same title.

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Although in most cases we have retained the Author’s original spelling and grammar to authentically reproduce the work of the Author and the original intent of such material, some additional notes and clarifications have been added for the modern reader’s benefit.

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KATE: THE JOURNAL OF A CONFEDERATE NURSE

BY

KATE CUMMING

Edited by Richard Barksdale Harwell

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 4

PREFACE 5

ILLUSTRATIONS 7

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 8

KATE CUMMING’S ITINERARY IN THE CONFEDERATE HOSPITAL SERVICE 17

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION 19

I: OKOLONA, CORINTH 24

II: OKOLONA 53

III: MOBILE 74

IV: RINGGOLD, DALTON, CHATTANOOGA 81

V: CHATTANOOGA, MOBILE 104

VI: KINGSTON, CHEROKEE SPRINGS 137

VII: ATLANTA, NEWNAN 156

VIII: NEWNAN, MOBILE 200

IX: WEST POINT, AMERICUS, MACON 238

X: MOBILE 254

XI: GRIFFIN 270

XII: NEWNAN 290

XIII: MOBILE 302

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 316

PREFACE

IN THE SPRING of 1866 John Esten Cooke was soliciting material for a book he proposed to publish the next fall, a book to be called Heroic Women of the South. It would be a full and reliable record of the noble actions of Southern Women—their charities, self-sacrifice, and heroic courage and devotion—during the trying scenes of the late war....For such a volume, ample material exists: and the writer urges upon his countrymen the importance of recording the facts upon the imperishable tablets of history. They are fresh in the memory to-day, as in every heart: but, a few years hence they will have passed into obscure tradition, and the coming generations will grow up in ignorance of these exhibitions of a grand devotion—as much the pride and glory of the South, as the courage of her sons upon the field.{1}

Cooke never published his proposed volume—surely not from a lack of material, more likely from being overwhelmed by a super-abundance of material. But the record of Southern women in the War is not lost. Indeed, it lives in some of the finest memoirs and personal narratives of that period: in Mary Boykin Chesnut’s Diary from Dixie, Phoebe Yates Pember’s A Woman’s Story, Constance Cary Harrison’s Recollections Grave and Gay, Mary Louise Wigfall Wright’s A Southern Girl in ‘61, Sallie A. Brock Putnam’s Richmond During the War, Kate Stone’s Brokenburn, Sarah Morgan Dawson’s A Confederate Girl’s Diary, Parthenia A. Hague’s A Blockaded Family, Dolly Lunt Burge’s A Woman’s War-Time Journal, Mary A. H. Gay’s Life in Dixie During the War, and Eliza Frances Andrews’ The War-Time Journal of a Georgia Girl. And these are only samples from an extensive list of women’s narratives of the War.

High on any such list should be Kate Cumming’s A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee. Miss Cumming’s narrative was among the first of the printed records of women’s part in the War. But, obscurely published in 1866, it has been too little known, and its present price on the rare-book market prohibits wide familiarity with the original edition. It has been my pleasure to edit it for presentation to a new and, it is hoped, wider audience.

The editorial mechanics have been kept as simple as possible. Occasional lapses into faulty grammar have been allowed to stand, but misspellings of proper names have been, where possible, corrected in brackets after their first occurrence and silently corrected in subsequent use. When it has been possible to fill out names indicated (as was often the case) by Miss Cumming only by an initial, the names have been given in full without remark. Exceptions have been made in a few cases where it was apparently the author’s intent to hide a name by the use of the initial only. These exceptions are indicated by square brackets.

The length of the original publication has necessitated some reduction of it. Miss Cumming quoted poetry at the drop of a cliché. Most of her quotations have been excised, but enough have been retained to hold the flavor of the original. A few short passages of religious musings (similar to passages retained) have been omitted, and a few discursive anecdotes of no point to the main line of her journal have been eliminated. Likewise, the length of the narrative has required that explanatory notes be kept to a minimum. The editor has attempted to restrict the notes to those which add to the medical and social history that the journal reflects. The many opportunities for notes on military and political history have purposely been passed over; such material is so readily available that it has seemed wise to emphasize less widely known aspects of the War. Many names could be identified by explanatory notes. This, however, would clutter the pages to little effect. Instead, the names that can be traced have been extended in the index, and only a few doctors and others of primary importance in Miss Cumming’s story individually noted.

The editor’s thanks are due Professor T. Harry Williams of the History Department of Louisiana State University, the library of Emory University (and especially to Miss Ruth Walling, paragon of reference librarians), the Birmingham Public Library, Dr. W. Stanley Hoole of the University of Alabama Library, Miss Mildred Jordan of the Abner W. Calhoun Medical Library at Emory University, Dr. Genevieve Bixler of the Southern Regional Education Board, Miss Eleanor Brockenbrough of the Confederate Museum in Richmond, Mr. Nelson Coffin, Jr. of Columbus, Georgia, Mr. McDonald Wellford and Dr. Beverley R. Wellford of Richmond, Virginia, Mr. John Cook Wyllie of the University of Virginia Library, the Library of the Boston Athenaeum, and—particularly—Mr. James I. Robertson, Jr. of Danville, Virginia, and Decatur, Georgia.

RICHARD BARKSDALE HARWELL

Chicago, Illinois

March 1959

ILLUSTRATIONS

A Postwar Photograph of Kate Cumming

The Evacuation of Corinth

Rules For a Hospital of the Army of Tennessee

Chattanooga From the North Bank of the Tennessee

Lookout Mountain and Vicinity

EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION

KATE CUMMING was a lady. Hardships and menial work, the disapproval of friends and family were her lot as a matron in the Confederate hospitals. But work, nor strain, nor the consciousness of disapproval could divert her from the life she conceived her duty. As much as any soldier, she contributed to the cause of the Confederacy. In risking the disdain of those who needed to prove themselves ladies by refraining from hard or unpleasant tasks she proved herself the finest kind of lady.

When the states of the South seceded in 1860-61 there was too little preparation for the actualities of war. Least of all was there preparation for an adequate hospital service for the army. What need an elaborate hospital corps for a war which would be decided in a few battles and in a few short months? Nor had medical service attained the stature it reached before later wars. Medical progress since 1865 has been so tremendous that it is difficult to realize the state of medical practice in 1861. (The Civil War, wrote George W. Adams in 1940, was fought in the very last years of the medical middle ages....Physicians trained in the old attitudes were trying desperately to meet the gigantic problems of military medicine and surgery with such means as they could command.{2}

As the War dragged into years and the toll of battles mounted toward an incredibly high total, an effective medical corps for the Confederacy had to be improvised. From a paper organization, based on the medical department of the pre-war United States army, the Confederate medical service developed into a well-knit, surprisingly efficient corps. Deprived of supplies, Confederate doctors substituted. Lacking resources, they used whatever they had. Driven by defeat from one post to another, they developed flexibility. The object was the provision of medical service. This object they accomplished. That they came nearer to success than any previous ‘doctors in uniform’ is a fact that was lost sight of in the blaze of medical progress that came in the seventies and eighties, declared Mr. Adams.{3}

Even more than the Army of Northern Virginia, the Confederate Army of Tennessee was a great laboratory of medical innovation. It was in the hospitals of this army that Kate Cumming recorded her observations as a hospital matron (executive nurse). It was of these hospitals that Dr. S. H. Stout, their remarkable director, could somewhat over-confidently assert: The Medical Department in the field and hospitals retained its organization intact and unbroken to the end of the war. So efficient was it that during Johnston’s and Sherman’s campaign, Johnston’s army was probably strengthened by it to an extent equal to a full division of fighting men. This was done by the organization and mobilizing of the hospitals in a manner so unique that its like was unknown in any previous war.{4} When Dr. Stout made this statement in a reminiscent address in 1902 he doubtless viewed his wartime achievements through the rose-colored glasses of memory, but there was a strong basis of fact in his claim.

Kate Cumming was a part of this, and it is her record of Confederate hospital life that is reprinted here. Though sometimes burdened with detail, her journal is a forthright, interesting, and informative account of a minor, but important, facet of Confederate army life. Professor E. Merton Coulter writes of it: As a realistic description of the Confederate hospital service, this journal is of first-rate importance.{5} It fully deserves to rank with the best of Confederate personal narratives.

Miss Cumming was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1835.{6} As a child she moved with her family to Montreal and thence, after a few years, to Mobile. There she grew up, to all intents a Southerner, but very conscious of her Scots background. At the outbreak of the War she was a comfortably situated young lady of Mobile. In 1860 Mobile was the second cotton port of the United States, and the numerous hands through which the cotton passed...were the means of making money plentiful....This flush of money caused an easy and rather indolent manner of living, which was enjoyed by the Southerner with a zest scarcely understood by the more hardy people of the North.{7} But the old Mobile was not to last long. The Presidential canvass of 1860 presaged an eventful decade. Like all Southern women, being perfectly satisfied with our rights, we thought it extremely unladylike to meddle with politics. I cannot tell why, but during that campaign we zealously entered into all concerning it....In the parlor, on the promenade, at balls and parties, and indeed everywhere, the subject of conversation was politics. We read with avidity the political speeches made North and South, and commented unsparingly upon their merits. We would leave our most important work to attend a speech or procession.{8}

Before it changed Mobile life, the coming of the War accelerated it. The War was a romantic fillip. Fireworks and impromptu celebrations had greeted the secession of South Carolina. When Virginia cast her fate with her sister Southern states in April 1861 All business was suspended, and young and old, rich and poor, gave themselves up for a grand carnival of rejoicing.{9} Miss Cumming spent a long and pleasant visit aboard the ship Oconaster in the spring of 1861 and eventually saw her mother and two sisters off to England aboard her. She was left in Mobile with her father and brother, the two David Cummings, to meet a new sort of life that none of them was prepared for or expected.

Concerts and theatricals for the benefit of the troops marked the first months of war. Troops were gaily feted as they left for the Virginian front. Oh! but we were full of zeal and patriotism in those days!{10}

Battles and wounds and defeats and deaths changed the gaiety to dread and fear. We had a long, dreary and anxious summer. The city was in a most defenceless state, and could easily have been captured...Our people were determined not to give it up without a struggle, so we did not know how soon the war ships would pass Fort Morgan, and throw shells into our midst....Everything was arranged for sudden flight to the woods.{11} The effects of war were making themselves felt.

Illness kept Miss Cumming inactive for several months. As she was recuperating she heard a report of an address at Saint John’s Church by the Reverend Benjamin M. Miller, an old friend of her family, in which he called on the ladies to go to the front to nurse the sick and wounded. Miss Cumming’s family disapproved of her being a part of such a project and she at first limited her participation to assisting those who were leaving for the hospitals in gathering blankets, quilts, and delicacies for the troops. About forty ladies had volunteered their services and planned to go to northern Mississippi or to Tennessee under the chaperonage of a Mrs. Ogden, the widow of a United States army major. Miss Augusta Jane Evans, who at twenty-seven had already achieved an enviable reputation as the South’s leading authoress, was among those volunteering. She wrote a friend in March of 1862 that she was very busy making all arrangements to leave home at any moment when I am notified that my services are needed elsewhere and added we are organizing a corps of nurses for the hospital...I have determined to devote myself to the hospital.{12}

The decisions of both Miss Evans and Miss Cumming were reversed. Miss Evans did not go to the front. Miss Cumming did. The last regiment that we went to see off, she wrote, was the Twenty-first Alabama. Many of the men we had known from boyhood, had been schoolmates and been associated together at Sunday school and church. I resolved then and there that if Mr. Miller would take me, I would go with him and do my best. I had never been inside of a hospital, and was wholly ignorant of what I should be called upon to do, but I knew that what one woman [Florence Nightingale] had done another could.{13} She overcame the opposition of her father but could not extinguish that of her brothers-in-law. One declared that no sister of his should take such a step, the other that nursing soldiers was no work for a refined lady. The pioneer work of Florence Nightingale was still fresh in the public mind and particularly in the Cumming household. The mother and sister of one of the sons-in-law had served with Miss Nightingale in the Crimea. But the young Southerner pointed out that Miss Nightingale had served a rich and powerful government and that the Confederacy could not give such assistance as she had been given. All of this made me more determined than ever. If our government was too poor to assist us, there was the more need of assisting it. And, as to the plea of its being no place for a refined lady, I wondered what Miss Nightingale and the hundreds of refined ladies of Great Britain, who went to the Crimea, would say to that!{14}

After weeks of preparation and waiting, Mr. Miller rushed into the Mobile churches on the evening of April 6, 1862, to announce to the congregations that the crisis had come, that his party of volunteers would leave on the next morning. While the battle of Shiloh was still in progress, these ladies headed north, considerably more willing than able to serve as Confederate hospital nurses.

Confederate hospital service was a harder life than Miss Cumming bargained for, but she stuck it out. Most of her fellow volunteers in Mr. Miller’s party soon gave up the work, but she continued in the hospitals at Corinth and Okolona until midsummer and, after a few weeks in Mobile, again offered her services in those at Chattanooga. After Confederate laws were changed in the fall of 1862 to permit the employment of women in hospitals she was regularly enlisted in the Confederate medical department.

If the state of the medical profession was generally backward at the beginning of the War, the status of nursing as an auxiliary calling was practically non-existent. Miss Nightingale had been internationally celebrated for her contribution with the British army, and her methods had been called to the attention of Americans through the publication of her Notes on Nursing: What It Is, and What It Is Not in New York in 1860. But the ambition of a few women to engage in professional nursing service was more than counterbalanced by the opposition within the medical profession to such a course. The North was first to see the advantages of regularizing the position of female nurses in the hospitals. On June 10, 1861, Dorothea L, Dix was appointed Superintendent of Female Nurses of the Army of the United States. Miss Dix was assigned the responsibility of assembling and training a corps of army nurses. She was not, however, supported with authority commensurate with her responsibility. The authorities lacked faith in her, and she eventually proved to be more authoritarian than authoritative in her administration. The nurses themselves, however, gained status despite both public and medical prejudice and eventually made up a highly creditable corps. The early circulars promoting Miss Dix’s work read in part: No women under thirty years of age need apply to serve in government hospitals. All nurses are required to be very plain looking women. Their dresses must be brown or black, with no bows, no curls, no jewelry, and no hoop skirts.{15} There were eager volunteers and the Union soon had organized and trained in the rudiments of nursing a corps of two thousand. Among them were Clara Barton, later the organizer of the American Red Cross, and Louisa May Alcott, who wrote a narrative of her wartime nursing career as well as her more famous Little Women.

The South was slow in recognizing the desirability of women as regular members of the medical department of the army. For a year and a half the women worked in the hospitals only as volunteers, and few of them had undergone any but home training. It was not until September 1862 that Congress granted them official status. But the women themselves had not been behindhand, and the services they had performed on a volunteer basis had trained them for fuller service as enrolled members of the Confederate Medical Department.

Dr. S. H. Stout, later Medical Director of Hospitals of the Army and Department of Tennessee, was the surgeon in charge of the Gordon Hospital in Nashville in 1861. He was not fully convinced of the usefulness of women in the hospitals until he saw the work of the Confederate ladies among the wounded following the battle of Shiloh. In his own personal narrative he declared, Then, and ever after throughout the war the women of the South, whether rich or poor, educated or uneducated, whenever or wherever they were in the vicinity of the sick or wounded, whether separated from their commands, suffering on the battlefield or languishing in the hospitals, never hesitated to go to their relief. Aged and stately matrons, youthful and inexperienced maidens, who perhaps had never left home the distance of a mile without an escort, undauntedly entered hospital wards or visited in out of the way places sick and wounded Confederate soldiers and administered to them. The soldiers of the war in the Crimea were comforted and cared for by a single Florence Nightingale, and the story of her good works has gone sounding down the pages of history, honoring one great and good woman for her work of love; but the Florence Nightingales who ministered to the comfort of sick and wounded Confederate soldiers, if a roll of these deserving women and young maidens could be made, could be counted only by the hundreds of thousands.{16}

More specifically of the women who were regularly enrolled as hospital matrons he asserted: "Mrs. Gilmer, Miss Cumming, and Mrs. Newsom, were the first refined, intellectual, self-denying ladies, who, in the midst of the suffering soldiers, served at their bunkside at night as well as day. Their self-denying and heroic benevolence inspirited many other educated and refined ladies to imitate their examples. It was not long after I was assigned to the directorship of the hospitals, before they were nearly all supplied, when circumstances permitted[,] with matrons of like character, who resided in the hospital buildings, and were equally as devoted and self-denying in their attention to the wounded.

"The gratitude of the soldiers was always manifest whenever these matrons, who were internes, came into the wards. For they served them as amanuenses by writing letters to the families and friends of the disabled. They prayed for and with them when requested. They cooked appropriate and delicate food for them when needed. They wiped the sweat from the brows of the dying and closed the eyes of the dead. Often entrusted to send the last messages of the dying to their families and friends at home, those faithful matrons never failed to perform their promises."{17}

By law, the matrons were obliged to exercise a superintendence over the entire domestic economy of the hospital, to take charge of such delicacies as may be provided for the sick, to apportion them out as desired, to see that the food or diet is properly prepared, and all such other duties as may be necessary. Certainly enough work to fill a twenty-four-hour day. But the matrons were authorized assistant matrons to superintend the laundry, to take charge of the clothing of the sick, the bedding of the hospital, to see that they are kept clean and neat, and perform such other duties as may be necessary, as well as ward-matrons, whose duties shall be to prepare the beds and bedding of their respective wards, to see that they are kept clean and in order, that the food or diet for the sick is carefully prepared and furnished to them, the medicine administered, and that all patients requiring careful nursing are attended to, and all such other duties as may be necessary.{18}

This law did much to bring system to the entire hospital service of the Confederacy. And the experience of the first year of the War soon resulted in better administered hospitals. After the fall of Nashville in early 1862 Dr. Stout had been transferred to Chattanooga and had organized the hospitals there on a high level of efficiency. Dr. Stout was a real medical pioneer. Removed by distance and by difficulty of communications from rigid control by the Surgeon General’s Office at Richmond, he was relatively free to develop the hospital organization most suited to his needs. In addition to making wise use of women in the hospitals, Dr. Stout added much to the comfort of his patients by effective control of the hospital funds—to the point of establishing a regular system of foraging and bartering for supplies. By purchasing a printing press for the exclusive use of his office and printing blank forms on it, he was able to save thousands of dollars that could be devoted to increasing the soldiers’ comfort. He devised an architectural arrangement of his hospital wards that promoted maximum efficiency and comfort within each building. His most far-reaching innovation was the establishment of the hospitals in his department on a truly mobile basis. In Richmond there were more than fifty establishments designated as hospitals, but the principal and lasting ones were those which were soon congregated into one great collection of buildings on Chimborazo Heights. In the Army of Tennessee they were scattered across hundreds of miles as they retreated before Sherman. Mobility of the hospitals was necessary for tactical reasons, and it was effective in placing the patients in the localities that were best able to furnish supplies.

The long trek of the Confederate hospitals began as early as 1862 when units were established in Cleveland, Tennessee, and Ringgold, Rome, and Dalton, Georgia. By the middle of the next year the hospitals had spread farther south into Georgia: at Kingston, Cherokee Springs, Catoosa Springs, Tunnel Hill, Marietta, and Newnan, and Dr. Stout’s command had been enlarged to include Atlanta. Retreat and reorganization brought hospitals in his department as far east as Madison, Athens, and Augusta. The campaign towards Atlanta necessitated the removal of the hospitals south of that city. By July 1864 they were scattered among Athens, Augusta, Barnesville, Columbus, Covington, Forsyth, Fort Gaines, Greensboro, Griffin, LaGrange, Macon, Madison, Milner, Newnan, Oxford, Thomaston, and Vineville. Soon establishments at Americus and Cuthbert were necessary to take care of the units threatened by the Federal advance. There were prison hospitals at Macon and Andersonville, and a hospital for the Georgia militia at Milledgeville. By early fall they had spilled over from Georgia into Auburn, Eufaula, Montgomery, and Notasulga in Alabama.{19}

It was the mobility of the Confederate hospitals that kept them in existence at all, but repeated moves contributed little to the health and comfort of the patients. Medical Inspector E. N. Covey reported to Richmond in September 1864: Nearly ever since I began my tour of Inspection, the Hospitals of this Department have been in a migratory state, and I have been fully able to appreciate both the trials of the Med. Officer and the hardships of the sick soldier; both of which have been trying in the extreme.{20} Inspector Covey urged consolidation of the hospitals and better quartermaster service for them. It is doubtful that consolidation would have improved efficiency or that, at this point, it could have been effected. The mobile system had proved its worth, if only as the lesser evil. But better quartermaster service would certainly have helped. Dr. Covey was seeing the mobile system only after it had been overextended when he, truthfully, wrote: The entire line of Hospitals on the Atlanta Road, from Augusta to West Point, has been abandoned. Of course all the points North of this Road have been rendered useless to us, either by the occupation by the Enemy or their proximity to his lines. This has necessitated the still greater scattering of, the already too much scattered, Hospitals, and squatting them in little towns, where every available house from a common Grocery to the town church has been taken for their purposes, and in most instances building[s] so taken have been entirely unfit for the treatment of the sick and wounded.{21}

The continued movement of the hospitals, however, was a necessity, not a choice. By October 1, 1864, they were all ordered to Columbus, Georgia, and two weeks later to Opelika, Alabama. With a stop at Tuscumbia, Alabama, headquarters were moved to Macon, Mississippi, by late November, and individual hospitals were scattered as far as Burnsville, Corinth, and Meridian, Mississippi, and Pulaski, Tennessee. Headquarters were moved back to Columbus, Georgia, on January 25, 1865, and back to Atlanta in early April. There the hospital service of the Army of Tennessee saw the end of the War, and the last official order of the medical department was issued from Atlanta April 27, 1865.{22}

President Jefferson Davis paid tribute to the efficiency of the whole Confederate medical service in saying: The only department that was not demoralized was the Hospital Department which was well in hand and doing efficient service until the end of the war.{23}

Miss Cumming’s narrative covers, of course, only a portion of the hospital system of the Army of Tennessee, itself only a portion of the whole Confederate hospital complex. But her experiences were typical of the service of the hospital matrons, and her journal is the fullest and best record of such services. It was published shortly after the end of the War, in the first rush of Confederate narratives into print. Introducing her preface with the usual apology that her journal had not been written for publication, she went on to declare: [The author’s] journal, which was written with the feelings which the scenes naturally called forth, is given without alteration. She has endeavored to give a true and impartial record of what came under her own observation. What is recorded on the authority of others may be taken for what it may be considered to be worth. In the matter of dates she is not, perhaps, in every instance accurate, though in general they will be found correct.{24}

References in her introduction to Henry Wirz’s trial indicate that the manuscript of her journal was turned over to the printer in the fall of 1865, too soon for a full rewriting after the close of the War. There are no indications that the original manuscript was doctored for publication, and errors in grammar and misdated entries are evidence to the contrary. The journal was published by John P. Morton and Co, in Louisville and by William Evelyn in New Orleans in 1866 under the cumbersome title A Journal of Hospital Life in the Confederate Army of Tennessee from the Battle of Shiloh to the End of the War: With Sketches of Life and Character, and Brief Notices of Current Events During That Period.

Perhaps the publication of her book was too close to the events Miss Cumming recounted. Perhaps its value was overlooked in the long flow of Confederate personal narratives. It never achieved the circulation it deserved and in recent years has been more often known as a book quoted than as a book read. Of the three personal narratives of hospital service in the Army of Tennessee it is by far the best. Mrs. S. E. D. Smith’s The Soldier’s Friend{25} embodies some useful and interesting facts of hospital work in North Georgia, Covington, and Cuthbert, but her narrative is obviously ghost-written and misses the personal touch with which Miss Cumming’s abounds. Mrs. Fannie A. Beers was in service with Miss Cumming at Chattanooga and Newnan. She tells of her experiences at these and other Confederate hospitals in her Memories,{26} but her account was written too long after the War to be of much direct value. The reader of Miss Cumming’s story is sometimes overwhelmed by the quantity of different names in it, but the exactitude of her details and the fullness of her record impart an unusual sense of immediacy to her narrative. She did not write with the flair for words or the instinct for the revealing anecdote that mark Phoebe Pember’s charming recollection of hospital service at Chimborazo,{27} but her account is more illuminating by its telling more of the actual workings of the hospitals. Miss Cumming herself undertook a reworking of her journal in a second book published as Gleanings from, Southland in 1895. But Gleanings from Southland is a poor shadow of the original narrative. She shortened the original by more than half and pared from it many of its most striking passages. The spirit of reconciliation which marks it, though representative of a noble motivation, cancels the lively defiance and courage so notable in the first version.

After the War Miss Cumming returned to Mobile. In 1874 she removed with her father to the new city of Birmingham and identified herself with church and cultural activities there. She taught school and music and was especially active in the Episcopal Church of the Advent. In her last years she took part in the work of the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the United Confederate Veterans. She never married. She died June 5, 1909, at Birmingham and was buried two days later from her beloved Saint John’s Episcopal Church in Mobile.{28} The living memory of her work in the Confederate hospitals had passed into obscure tradition, recalled only by devoted patients who survived her. But she had left for all time, for each renewal of interest in her time, a printed record that is forever as fresh as the day it was written.

KATE CUMMING’S ITINERARY IN THE CONFEDERATE HOSPITAL SERVICE

1862

April 7—Left Mobile for the battlefields

April 8—Arrived at Okolona, Mississippi

April 11—Arrived at Corinth, Mississippi

May 27—Returned to Okolona

June 18—Arrived in Mobile

August 28—Left Mobile for Chattanooga, travelling via Montgomery, West Point, Georgia, and Atlanta; arrived at Chattanooga August 30 and sent to Ringgold, Georgia

September 4—Visited Chattanooga for the day

September 10—Arrived at Dalton, Georgia

September 16—Arrived at Chattanooga

1863

January 17—Left Chattanooga for Mobile, travelling via Atlanta and Montgomery; arrived at Mobile January 19

February 5—Left Mobile to return to Chattanooga, travelling via Selma (February 7), Montgomery (February 8), and Atlanta (February 9); arrived at Chattanooga February 10

July 22—Arrived at Kingston, Georgia

July 30—Visited Rome, Georgia, for the day

August 7—Returned to Chattanooga

August 12—Arrived at Cherokee Springs, Georgia

September 7—Left Cherokee Springs for Newnan, Georgia, travelling via Dalton and Atlanta; arrived at Newnan September 9

September 28—Left Newnan to visit hospitals at Ringgold and in the field till October 3; returned via Marietta (October 4 and 5) and Atlanta; arrived at Newnan October 5

1864

January 29—Left Newnan for Mobile; arrived at Mobile January 31 and returned to Newnan some few days before March 3

May 16—Visited Atlanta; returned to Newnan May 17

May 20—Visited Atlanta for the day

August 15—Left Newnan for Americus, travelling via West Point, Opelika, Alabama; Columbus, and Macon (August 17); arrived at Americus August 19

November 27—Left Americus for Gainesville, Alabama, travelling via Butler, Georgia (November 28), Columbus (November 29 and 30), Montgomery (November 30 to December 5), and Selma (December 7); arrived at Mobile December 9; did not continue to Gainesville

1865

February 28—Left Mobile to return to Georgia, travelling via Montgomery (March 4), Columbus (March 5), and Macon (March 6 to 8); arrived at Griffin, Georgia, March 8

May 4—Left Griffin for Newnan, travelling via Atlanta; arrived at Newnan May 5

May 17—Left Newnan to return to Mobile, travelling via West Point, Tuskegee, Alabama (May 22 to 26), and Montgomery; arrived at Mobile May 27

AUTHOR’S INTRODUCTION

FOR GIVING the following pages to the public some apology may be due. When the war closed, human nature like, I felt a great thirst for revenge. I should, indeed, not have liked it had I been told so then; but I can look back now and feel how just would have been the charge.

I thought I could hear with calmness, nay, even pleasure, that the French, or any other nation, had desolated the North as the South v has been. Since then a better feeling has arisen; and, while arranging my journal for the press, the vivid recollections of what I have witnessed during years of horror have been so shocking, that I have almost doubted whether the past was not all a fevered dream, and, if real, how I ever lived through it.

These notes of passing events, often hurriedly penned amid the active duties of hospital life, but feebly indicate, and only faintly picture, the sad reality. I now pray, and will never cease to pray to the end of my days, that men may beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning-hooks, and that nation may not lift a sword against nation, nor learn war any more.

It is with the hope that the same feeling may be aroused in every reader that I present this volume to the public.

The southerner may learn a lesson from the superhuman endurance of the glorious dead and mutilated living who so nobly did their duty in their country’s hour of peril. And the northerner, I trust, when he has brought in review before him the wrongs of every kind inflicted on us, will cry, Enough! they have suffered enough; let their wounds now be healed instead of opening them afresh.

I have another motive in view. At the present moment there are men on trial for ill-treating northern prisoners. This is to me the grossest injustice we have yet suffered.{29} I would stake my life on the truth of everything which I have related, as an eyewitness, in the following pages. I have used the simplest language, as truth needs no embellishment. May I not hope that what I have related in regard to the manner in which I saw prisoners treated will soften the hearts of the northerners toward the men now undergoing their trial, and make them look a little more to themselves?

We begged, time and again, for an exchange, but none was granted. We starved their prisoners! But who laid waste our corn and wheat fields? And did not we all starve? Have the southern men who were in northern prisons no tales to tell—of being frozen in their beds, and seeing their comrades freeze to death for want of proper clothing? Is there no Wirz for us to bring to trial? But I must stop; the old feeling comes back; these things are hard to bear. People of the North, the southerners have their faults. Cruelty is not one of them. If your prisoners suffered, it was from force of circumstances, and not with design.

I know that the women of the South will think I have said too much against them; but let them remember that I, too, am a woman, and that every slur cast on them falls on me also. Will the neglect of the suffering, which I have but too faintly sketched, not serve to make them resolve in future to do better; and, like the lady in the dream, say

"The wounds I might have healed—

The human sorrow and smart;

And yet it never was in my soul

To play so ill a part:

But evil is wrought by want of thought,

As well as want of heart."{30}

I feel confident that very much of this failure is to be attributed to us. I have said many a time that, if we did not succeed, the women of the South would be responsible. This conclusion was forced upon me by what I could not but see without willful blindness. Not for one moment would I say that there are no women in the South who have nobly done their duty, although there was an adverse current, strong enough to carry all with it. Whole books might be written, recounting heroic deeds and patient suffering, amid trials seemingly impossible to endure. The names of Newsom, Hopkins, Gilmer, Evans, Harrison, Walke, Monroe, and I might mention a host of others, will live in the hearts of the people of the South as long as there is a heart here to beat.

Let us cease to live on the surface; let us do and dare—remembering, if we are true to ourselves, the world will be true to us. There is one very important work before us—a work all will sympathize with and aid. The war has left thousands of our men almost as helpless as they were in infancy. Had we been successful, our government would have done its duty in providing for these men. As the case now stands, there will be very little care bestowed on them. Is nothing to be done for these heroes? It is not charity to care for them, but a sacred duty.

In bringing before the minds of the public, as I have, that I am a native of the land of the mountain and the flood, there is a motive. All true, honest southerners, I feel confident, will acknowledge that I have not exaggerated the evils that existed in the South. To say I did not feel the wrongs of the South as deeply as any native would be far from the truth. God knows how my heart has bled for them;. though many a time, when I have seen her people proving recreant in her hour of trial, I have said that I was thankful I could claim another land; forgetting, in my blindness, that she had her traitors as well as we. And let her not, when she compares the struggle of the two for independence, forget that there is such a thing as comparisons being odious. Were Scotland brought over here and placed in our midst, we should scarcely heed it, from the small surface she would occupy.

We have a territory equal in extent to Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain, and not one tenth of the population to defend it. The enemy could come in with his immense armies at any point. That is why the flanking movement succeeded so well.

When the war broke out, I looked around for a parallel, and naturally my native country and her struggle came up first. Since I have been mingling with the southern people, I have found that I was far from being the only one who was claiming that land of romance and chivalry. It was impossible to go any place without meeting her descendants; and, thanks to Walter Scott and Burns, they had any other wish but that of disclaiming her.

I have never seen Scotland to remember her, but have read much about her mountains, glens, and lakes, and I cannot see how they can surpass in grandeur and beauty those we have here; and had we only the writers, gifted with the fire to sing, as none but Scotia’s bards have done, in her praise, they would find beauties here as boundless as our empire.

Many will say that it is impossible that the South can ever prosper in union with the North. For centuries, not four years, England and Scotland, on the same island, a small rivulet dividing them, fought against each other with a ferocity such as no two nations ever exhibited. In 1603 the throne of England became vacant by the death of Queen Elizabeth. The next and nearest heir was James VI of Scotland. He ascended the English throne. The two nations from that time were united in all save the name. In 1707 the Act of Union was passed, and the two nations formed what is now Great Britain.

Many years have elapsed since that union. Is a Scotchman to-day an Englishman? or, vice-versa, an Englishman a Scotchman? All know they are as distinct in nationality as the first day they were united. Where is there such a union for harmony? Not on this earth.

Scotland has lost nothing in grandeur or might since then. Her seats of learning can compete with any in the world. Where is there a nation that can boast of more brilliant lights, both civil and military? Is not her literature spread broadcast over the whole earth? But not even in all these does her greatness consist. The Cotter’s Saturday Night gives them to us in graphic terms, and

"From scenes like these old Scotia’s grandeur springs,

That makes her loved at home, revered abroad:

Princes and lords are but the breath of kings,

‘An honest man’s the noblest work of God!’"{31}

Let us learn a lesson from these facts, and, as I said before, look to ourselves.

Many a man, whose name is now a shining light, never would have been heard of had not misfortune come upon him. The misfortunes did not make him great; his greatness was there before, but it had been pampered in luxury. If the southern people ever were a great people they will show it now. In the whole world there is not such a favored spot as the South. It is an

Empire mightier than the vast domain swayed once by vicious Cæsars!

That is why the North fought so hard to keep us with her. We have every climate necessary for the well-being of man; we have prairies, mountains, lakes, rivers, and a soil inferior to none. Is this fair heritage to become a howling wilderness, because a people we dislike will have us unite with them whether we will or no? Let us imitate them in what is worthy of imitation. They are enterprising and industrious: we need both. We have much to be proud of. We have men who may be likened to the great Washington, without any disparagement to him: Davis—for I feel certain that not a hair of his head will be harmed{32}—Lee, Johnston, and many others. And have, we not our dead? if dead we may call them, for

To live in hearts we leave behind is not to die!

O, let us give up this terrible strife! A truly great man does not know revenge; his soul rises above it as something fit for meaner minds. So with nations. Leave our statesmen to settle our difficulties; and let us remember those exquisite lines of Goldsmith, written after he had walked the weary world round in search of happiness, and returned to his native land:

"How small, of all that human hearts endure,

That part which laws or kings can cause or cure!

Still to ourselves in every place consigned,

Our own felicity we make or find;

With secret course, which no loud storms annoy,

Glides the smooth current of domestic joy.

The lifted ax, the agonizing wheel,

Luke’s iron crown, and Damien’s bed of steel,

To men remote from power but rarely known,

Leave reason, faith, and conscience all our own."{33}

I: OKOLONA, CORINTH

April 7, 1862.—I left Mobile by the Mobile and Ohio Railroad for Corinth, with Rev. Mr. Miller and a number of Mobile ladies.{34} We are going for the purpose of taking care of the sick and wounded of the army.

As news has come that a battle is now raging, there are not a few anxious hearts in the party—my own among the number, as I have a young brother,{35} belonging to Ketchum’s Battery,{36} who I know will be in the midst of the fight, and I have also many dear friends there.

A gentleman, Mr. Skates, has heard that his son is among the killed, and is with us on his way to the front to bring back the remains of him who a short time since formed one of his family circle. May God give strength to the mother and sisters now mourning the loss of their loved one! May they find consolation in the thought that he died a martyr’s death; was offered up a sacrifice upon the altar of his country; and that, when we have gained our independence, he, with the brave comrades who fought and fell with him, will ever live in the hearts and memories of a grateful people! I cannot look at Mr. Skates without asking myself how many of us may ere long be likewise mourners! It is impossible to suppress these gloomy forebodings.

About midnight, at one of the stations, a dispatch was received prohibiting anyone from going to Corinth without a special permit from headquarters. Our disappointment can be better imagined than described. As military orders are peremptory, there is nothing for us to do but to submit. Mr. Miller has concluded to stop at one of the small towns, as near Corinth as he can get, and there wait until he receives permission for us to go on.

April 8.—Arrived at Okolona, Miss., this morning. We are still sixty miles from Corinth. When we alighted at the depot, we were told that there were no hotels to go to. As it had been raining for some time very hard, all about us looked as cheerless as possible. Our prospects, as may be supposed, were gloomy enough. While in this perplexity, each one giving an opinion as to what we had best do, word was brought us that the citizens of the place, hearing of our arrival and mission, had opened their houses for our reception, and many sent carriages to take us to their homes.

As the good people of Mobile have provided us with comforts and delicacies of all kinds for the soldiers, our failure to reach Corinth is a sad disappointment. The stories which we hear of the suffering and almost starving condition of our men aggravate it still more.

The people here can tell us little or nothing about the battle, except that one has been fought. How our forces have come out of it, they have not learned.

Several of our party, myself included, are domiciled with an excellent family by the name of Haughton, consisting of an old lady, her young daughter Lucy, and two pretty girls, her granddaughters. They are extending to us true southern hospitality.

We were all exhausted by loss of sleep, disappointment, and anxiety, and hence did not go to the cars when they passed at 11 A. M. Mrs. Haughton’s two granddaughters went down, and, upon their return, informed us that the cars were filled with the wounded on their way to Mobile and other points. Among other items, there is a report that Captain Ketchum is killed, and all his men are either killed or captured; that the Twenty-first Alabama Regiment has been cut to pieces. I was never more wretched in my life! I can see nothing before me but my slaughtered brother, and the bleeding and mangled forms of his dying comrades, and the men of the gallant Twenty-first Alabama, whom